Her Father Was a Pimp and Her Mother Was a Prostitute. Aged 18 Months Old, She Was Abandoned and Raised in Care
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MARIA PEDRO Her father was a pimp and her mother was a prostitute. Aged 18 months old, she was abandoned and raised in care. Education was her way out and she went on to manage a supermodel, Michelin-starred chefs, Peter Gabriel and become the most influential woman in English rugby. ‘Remarkable’ doesn’t begin to do justice to the story of Maria Pedro. 114 RUGBY WORDS & PICTURES therugbyjournal.com @JournalRugby 115 MARIA PEDRO Top right: Meeting and greeting Prince Charles in her role as Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Hounslow; Phil and Maria with the Rugby World Cup Trophy in 2003: Phil with Jason Leonard just after England had won the World Cup in Sydney: Maria and Phil join Michelin-starred chef Michael Caines to promote his hotel and restaurant at Lympstone Manor in Exeter; Outside Marylebone Registry Office on their wedding day in September 2018 116 RUGBY WORDS & PICTURES therugbyjournal.com @JournalRugby 117 MARIA PEDRO Right: England celebrate their 2003 Rugby World Cup victory in Sydney. Below right: Phil Vickery and Steve Thompson celebrate victory with Phil Keith-Roach after the International match between Argentina and England on June 22, 2002 at the Velez Sarsfield Stadium, in Buenos Aires. September the 10th, 2018, Marylebone Registry Office. A humble enough “I would do coaching and video sessions about the opposition, which hadn’t location for a wedding, but with a guest list that includes former England players been done before,” he explains. “They seemed to quite like it and kept asking me Jeremy Guscott, Phil Vickery, Lawrence Dallaglio and Andrew Sheridan, Sir Clive back. I was thrilled, honoured, delighted. But I was also a bit scared to ask the Woodward, Peter Gabriel, Michelin-starred chef Michael Caines and living legend management about getting paid. of children’s TV, Baroness Floella Benjamin. Taking the pictures, Dave Rogers, a “So I spoke to Dick, who had been England’s head coach in 1983. He said ‘well, photographer who has spent 40 years capturing some of rugby’s most iconic you’ve got to meet Maria Pedro. She’s the number one rugby agent. She’s the only moments. proper agent. She’s extraordinary!’ Phil Keith-Roach and Maria Pedro had been ‘going steady’ for 21 years - he was “I remember every detail of that day. I went downstairs and was greeted by 75 and she was 64 – but the wedding had been hastily arranged. Maria’s radiant smile. We talked for an hour. I found her intriguing.” A few weeks earlier, Maria had surgery to remove a tumour in her a frontal lobe, They met again later that evening at a gathering arranged by Greenwood at while Phil was having treatment for cancer having originally been told the previous The Sporting Page pub in Chelsea. year that he might have only six months to live. “We all went out for dinner that evening,” recalls Phil. “But then people As they drove back home following her operation, he saw a couple walking started to drift off. I lived across the road and we were the last two there. That day down the steps outside the registry office, turned to Maria and said, ‘we’re getting changed my life. married in there’. “I must have been captivated immediately because my youngest daughter “We could have spent years preparing that wedding and would not have tells me I rang her within two days!” bettered it,” says the former Rosslyn Park hooker who became England’s first Buoyed by his new-found romance, Phil went in to see the RFU and they agreed professional scrum coach. to give him a cheque for a couple of grand. It was only after Sir Clive Woodward “I think she wanted to get married quite quickly after we first met,” he admits. became coach in September 1997 that he was handed a formal contract. “It’s been a bit harrowing sometimes, thinking about how long I left it. “I spent eleven years with England Rugby but I couldn’t have done it without Maria. “I’m just thankful we had the chance at the end. When she was ill, I just knew. I We would watch a game on Friday evening and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. was desperate to be married to her, absolutely desperate. It suddenly came to me “Then we would get back home, she would type up my match reports and ‘why haven’t I? Why have I denied her?’ I would send them to Clive Woodward along with all the other coaches.” “Peter Gabriel later came to my house and gave me a memory stick. At first, I At the point when Woodward started his reign as coach, Pedro was the didn’t know what was on it, but he had filmed the exact moment when we became most influential woman in English rugby. Nowadays, she would probably be husband and wife. described as a ‘super agent’. At one point she was representing most of the “That film has left a mark on me in my ways. I must not let grief warp the England XV including Jeremy Guscott, Austin Healey, Matt Dawson, Kyran memory that we were in total unison at that moment.” Bracken and Gareth Chilcott - players who all went on enjoy successful careers Just a few days after becoming Mrs Keith-Roach, an MRI scan revealed that outside of the sport. Pedro had cancer, which was advanced to a stage where it was beyond treatment. That was a remarkable achievement in itself. Even now, only one woman She passed away on November 4, 2018. features on England Rugby’s list of approved agents. But her ascension was all the more improbable given the circumstances by which Maria came into this world. Phil and Maria first met in the Mayfair office of former England flanker, turned coach, turned entrepreneur and man about town, Dick Greenwood. The Born on May 22, 1952, in North-West London, Maria never met her father, purpose of the meeting was to sort out Keith-Roach’s situation with England Rugby. who she later discovered was a pimp and died before she was born after being After he stopped playing for Rosslyn Park, Keith-Roach taught economics at fatally stabbed in a brawl. Her mother was a prostitute and abandoned Maria when Dulwich College. But he was also coaching and had a sideline with a new company she was just eighteen months old. called Rhino that was developing a scrum machine known as The Powerhouse. Some forty years later, Maria hired a private investigator who tracked down her Ahead of Australia’s 1984 tour of the UK and Ireland, Wallabies coach Alan family to a council house in Slough. It turned out to be a cathartic moment but not Jones contacted Keith-Roach to help with the scrum and lineouts, but also to use in the way that Pedro would have imagined. Her white mother wanted nothing to The Powerhouse. The Wallabies won all four test matches against England, do with a mixed-race daughter. Ireland, Scotland and Wales with an aggregate points margin of 110-33. Pedro later said, “In retrospect it was a really liberating experience. I could Yet it would be another eleven years before Keith-Roach was asked to join the imagine how I would be and what I would be doing if I’d stayed with her — a England senior set up. miserable existence.” 118 RUGBY WORDS & PICTURES therugbyjournal.com @JournalRugby 119 MARIA PEDRO Right: Phil Keith-Roach (middle) with former England internationals Phil Greening and Jason Leonard Below Right: The happy couple with Baroness Floella Benjamin She spent most her of childhood within the state care system but education She added, “I can’t do anything for them if they don’t perform well on the field. provided a pathway to a better life. Some people rushed off into promoting themselves as celebrities and forgot the After passing the 11-plus, she got into a grammar school, but it was in Ashford, playing side. To their cost. Whoever said it’s not about winning but taking part was Kent, which involved a four-hour round trip every weekday. Eventually, Brent talking nonsense.” Council’s social services secured Pedro a place at St Catherine’s – a boarding Guscott soon became an ubiquitous figure, starring in TV shows, writing school near Guildford. She became best friends with Jill Moore, whose father was newspaper columns, and modelling for catalogues. He was the rugby celebrity Peter Moore aka Baron Moore of Wolvercote. His sole England cap came against who was adored by your sister, your mother and your grandmother. But he also Wales in the 1951 Five Nations, but he was far better known as the Private Secretary had a stellar career on the pitch. to the Queen. “As I recall it, she went to the Hong Kong Sevens and saw Jerry play,” says Phil. The Moores would become the closest thing Pedro ever had to a surrogate “She once said to me, ‘if he was running across snow he wouldn’t leave a footprint.’ family and she would become a frequent guest at Kensington Palace, mixing with He also sent me texts after Maria died saying she had a profound effect on his life high society; a world away from the life that she had known just a few years earlier. and he knew she had a profound effect on mine. After graduating from the London School of Economics, she trained as a social “When we started going out together he said to Maria, ‘isn’t he a bit old for worker before moving into finance as a merchant banker.